BWW Reviews: SWEENEY TODD, Harrington's Pie and Mash Shop, 39-45 Shaftesbury Avenue, March 20 2015

In the four months since I last saw this Sweeney, much has happened to Rachel Edwards and her once little production playing to audiences of 32 in a hundred-year-old pie shop. First there were the reviews that had theatregoers TfLing to find their way down the Northern Line. Then Hollywood A-lister James Franco turned up at the formica tables and pronounced the show every bit as good as the hype. Then the big one - indeed, the biggest one - Stephen Sondheim himself materialised in a side-street in Tooting and loved it, immortalising the visit with a selfie to remember. And then it was gone...

Well, not quite. Stephen spoke to Cameron and Cameron spoke to his people and Cameron spoke to Rachel and soon - in a space just next to Les Mis on Shaftesbury Avenue, Harrington's Pie Shop has, like Sweeney's razors, grown high, eerily so as the match to its original is uncanny.

So - does Sweeney on Shaftesbury live up to the hype? Oh yes, oh yes, it really does. Nothing has been lost and much gained, with a new confident looseness that comes from sparkling notices that must have set some kind of record for a fringe shop - certainly for one staged in Tooting.

Crucially, all the original cast are back (with just Zoe Doano as Johanna a newbie and she's as fantastic as everyone else). By reconstructing the set so faithfully, the intimacy of the original production is just as breathtaking in the West End. We can take our pick from a cast as talented as those anywhere on London's premier street of theatres, all performing as close as the next person in the queue for Phantom returns.

Maybe you like Joseph Taylor's sweet innocence as Tobias Ragg, the urchin with the heart of gold? Or Kiara Jay's soaring soprano as the beggar woman (poor thing, poor thing)? Perhaps the evil grinning duo of Ian Mowat's Beadle Bamford and Duncan Smith's Judge Turpin give you the men we love to hate (and make us feel better by justifying Sweeney's uber-violence)? Who wouldn't fall for the young lovers, Nadim Naaman and Zoe Doana? And, his right arm restored, Jeremy Secomb's Sweeney Todd and Siobhan McCarthy's Mrs Lovett are as amorally darkly, seductively funny as ever.

Sondheim liked the intensity of this production and the power of the performances (as in your face as Sweeney's razors) and that intensity gives full value to the songs. There are the comic turns: "Worst Pies In London"; "Pirelli's Miracle Elixir"; "Parlour Songs", the love songs: "Johanna"; "Kiss Me"; "By The Sea", and the setpieces: "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd"; "Poor Thing"; "A Little Priest". Not only do they please the ear with melody and wit, there's joy in finding hints of a cockney rhythm of speech, perhaps a pinch of polka in the tunes and more than a pinch of patter in the lyrics. Hugh Wheeler's book is such grand Grand Guignol that one might just lose the delight of the songs in one's haste to find out what happens next - but not in this Sweeney!

And those three words are a good place to finish the review - what happens next to Tooting's Sweeney, to producer Rachel Edwards and to this musical that should surely never be away from London's stages for long? Watch this space...

Tooting Arts Club's Sweeney Todd is at Harrington's Pie and Mash Shop, 39-45 Shaftesbury Avenue until 30th May.

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